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Two interesting books

stumbled into a library two interesting books:

Janis Langin, Conserving the Enlightment, French Military Engineering from Vauban to the Revolution , MIT Press, 2004, 532pp.

The title is a response to Ken Alder, Engineering the French Revolution , who claimed to find a quality intrinsic to the emergence of revolutionary figure of the engineer in the eighteenth century France. Janis Langin from a subject he knows well: the controversy between the Corps of Engineers and the Marquis de Montalembert on the ideas of the latter in terms of fortification. It organizes around a story of this episode of the thought of military engineering and body engineering, it shows the emergence in this context the concept of science for engineers. It remains a practical science whose main purpose, strength and safety of built structures, encourages the continuation of proven methods.

admit not being sure that the book Alder certainly interesting (and sometimes horrifying, it must be said), deserves to polarize the debate at this point - in any event, here we are with a recent history well kept and engineering in the eighteenth century, both the organization of military engineers of scientific thinking and the mentality of a body art. In addition, work on the controversy Langin fortification perpendicular undertaken for years, deserved to be published in book form. Well, a couple of balls on Metallurgical de Montalembert, but ultimately less than the deplorable bio that was published last year by a local scholar.

Chris Evans and Göran Rydén (eds.), The Industrial Revolution in Iron, The Impact of British Coal Technology in Nineteenth-Century Europe , Ashgate, 2005, 200pp

Collections articles of this type are sometimes passable, other times mediocre (the syndrome of publish or perish ) but sometimes they do more forward thinking than a brick of a single author. This is the case of the latter, edited by two eminent representatives of a new generation of historians of technology - I heard Chris Evans at the conference on steel, CNAM, it was brilliant. He will go far, this little guy. Finally, rather large, actually.

What they're saying, collectively? What if, as we know, the technical changes occurred in Great Britain for the production of iron had a fundamental influence on European industry, this influence has a story - it is not immediate, it is not complete, it goes without saying. There is not a "technical revolution" that overnight returns the old processes to the rank of survivals, but rather the contributions vary according to regions considered in terms of local technical culture. It seems obvious, but it has not been studied that much. What interested the first generation of French historians of technology, those 50-60 years is the emergence of the technical system which then triumphed with the creation of the ECSC and peak production thirty glorious. This book shows how the story is more subtle, and how much space remains to be explored if we are willing to turn from the "idol of origins" (to use one of these forms of Marc Bloch that we do not meditate enough).

short, with these avenues of research, here we are with the job for twenty years. Well, let's go!

Well, not everything, but Feather's research, companies are also in years, they deserve to be written, too!